iRead : The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I read a thriller/mystery book after a long time and a ‘real’ one for the first time. ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is a novel written by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson as first part of Millennium series. The author was dead by the time these books got published and couldn’t see the acclaimed it got.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Plot :

Mikael Blomkvist is financial journalist and is part owner of a Magazine. Mikael life hits a roadblock when he gets sued by one of the biggest industrialist for writing a story without any evidence and gets convicted. Seizing the opportunity another retired industrialist Henrik Vanger pursue him to investigate the case of his missing niece, Harriet. Harriet went missing 40 year ago and case has been closed. Mikael reluctantly takes up the case and start investigating the with pretext of writing a autobiography of Henrik Vanger so he can interview Hanger’s family members. Mid-way through the investigation he is assisted by girl named Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth Salander is young girl with her own past and is a social misfit. They get along and start unearthing the case step by step. They both connect the missing dots and how.

iRead : Dork: The Incredible Adventures Of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese

After a long time I finished a book. I tried ‘Girls from Libya’ , ‘May I hebb Your Attension pliss’ and ‘Three Men on a boat’ but left all of them mid way. MIHYAP was so bad I couldn’t read more than 10 pages and Greatbong is suppose to be a pro-blogger. Still I switched to another pro-blogger ie Sidin.

Its pity that I discovered Sidin’s blog so late. He has a funny bone and it reflects in his blog, tweets and book. Its his first attempt at writing and he has already decided to write trilogy.

Dork

The book documents the journey of Robin from his placement day till he completes an eventful year in his first company. Its documented in diary format from Robins point of view.

iRead : 2 States

Tangy Tuesday

( The Post was picked by BlogAdda for Tangy Tuesday [link] )

We Indians love weddings and the whole idea of arrange marriage thing. From engagement ,The night calls, the courtship days, city darshan ,to and ( only) till the wedding day. The food, the feras , girls in indian wear, the band, the mandap and the godi. I love them; And I think everybody except the victim(the groom) loves it. Don’t we? Wedding undoubtedly is the biggest event in life of indian parents. They start saving from the day the son/daughter is born for there wedding , consciously or otherwise.

We also love romance. Not the kind which we see in public gardens, band stand, cinema halls and college campuses but more classy kind of which we do with-in ‘samajik maryada’. We are indians right? We don’t show it; or may be we are just to afraid of shivseniks.

Keeping those point in mind our all time fav. author(are you offended?) chetan bhagat is out with his next masala book. Where he mixes above two ingredients with tadaka of inter-cast marriage. You don’t have to have an IQ of 180 (like me) to guess that this gonna be a best seller. Even if Chetan writes a book called ’200 days of constipation’ it will be a bestseller!!!

Chetan is like rakhi sawant of indian writer’s association. You can love him, You can hate him but You cant IGNORE him!!! What an original thought I must say.

Ok..OK.. I like chetan bhagat’s books . I loved the FPS , call center was a average book and 3 mistakes was bit better than 2nd one(lot of you will disagree but I think call center comes last in my list).Lets see where 2 States stand.

Review :

If you are a chetan bhagat fan you don’t need to think for a second (and you will not) to give this book a shot, If you are a basher this review will not help in any case. But if you are in between and loved FPS ( I assume all loved this one ) and thought the next two books were shallow and unrealistic; keep on reading.

Chetan’s books are predictable and this one is no exception in fact it gives out whole plot on its back cover. But I don’t mind reading predictable books I look for the execution part. We all have seen hera-feri endless time, we know it scene by scene, I even remember the dialogues but it doesn’t stop me from watching the same movie next time Because it’s the execution which matters.

As per the claim book is inspired by authors own love story and marriage. And we can see that in the book. The plot starts at India’s top b-school where krish and ananya meets and the love story begins. If you ask me the love story at IIM is the only boring part in the book, If you compare as whole. Author has taken inspiration from his own past books for the same. So it all sounds similar. The real fun begins when convince-the-parents part comes.

2 States

The author has taken liberty to lift a situation from DDLJ (Its bestseller too, isn’t?) where our sada punjabi munda is in in-laws den to win them over by giving tuition to his typical IIT-on-the-mind future brother-in-law to make presentation for a public bank business plan for future father-in-law. Its fun to read chetan’s take on south Indians. Similar situation for the girl to win the not-so-honky-dory parents of krish. And the plot goes on as suggested in synopsis of the book, no rocket science here.

Chetan has mastery at mixing emotions moments with funny one liners . Your eyes get wet at the right places. And its difficult to control the laughter for most of the read. I loved the scene when the guy proposes to the whole family, bit filmy but what a gesture. Few last pages are laugh riot. And look out when author compares punju’s and madrasi’s, too good. No wonder characters and situations are bit exaggerated, but what’s the fun if you don’t exaggerated a bit?

I liked this one more than the chetan’s last two releases. And it has more ROFL moments than FPS, trust me on that. Obviously you can’t expect FPS from him ever again. Now author has moved to full masala movie mode, No wonder all his books are turning into 70mm hindi movies. This one is the perfect potboiler too. I hope bollywood producers are taking notes.

The final verdict : its cheap (the price) and full on time pass. Chetan try to put across some serious thought as well but its get lost in between his one liners. I think book is filmy and too much fun. It’s better than any of the movies released this year. But if you think bollywood movies sucks or you use fork and spoon to eat sada dosa or you take all the stupid quizzes on facebook than you are no fun; buy ‘the white tiger’ you may like that one…:P

To say the least.. this books comes closest to FPS; and Undoubtedly pure fun ride .

Rating : 4/5 ( If you are chetan’s fan like me).

P.S. : Its the 1st book I bought for myself which is not pirated…yay!!

iRead : The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time

“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a book that is hard to put down. It brilliantly pulls the reader inside the brain of an autistic person, with a spine-tingling effect “
-one of the praise

It rarely happen that you finish reading a book and immediately you feel that you should read that all over again;and ‘The curious incident of dog in the night time’ is one such book.

The Curious Incident

After reading the book’s title two thing can happen either u will think its intersing oryou will think its not your type.I heard about the book and did my detecting* and thought that plot was really intresting ; where you will find a plot which has dog as the victim and a 15 year kid finding who is the killer.

Its a story about a 15 year old autistic kid Christopher who decides to find killer of a dog because he likes animal more then humans.And in the process he finds some unpleasent things about his own family.Most intersting part about the book is how its narrated;The whole book is through eyes of autistic kid how he thinks and why he doesnt talk to stranger and how simple its to calculate prime numbers for him.And how he solve quadtratic equation like this 0 = 437×2 + 103x + 11 to calm himself down.

The book doesnt have chapters like other novels it has small narrations numbered one after other and author has used prime numbers to number them.I have never read such unique and refreshing novel with such different approach and I loved the humour this book creates;And i think it clearly describe how autistic kids think and why they behave like that they do.. in very simple and light manner.

I think you all should give it a shot.I generally dont read e-books but this was an exception as it was difficult to find the book and second it only has 134 pages so it was not a tough task .Its highly recommended book.If u wanna read an e-book ping me.

My Verdict : 4.5/5.

Now after reading two fictions back-to-back m seriously thinking about loosing my virginity….but no more e-book though… i hope you got that….:p

Just a glimpse of wat book has :

I find people confusing.
This is for two reasons.
The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words.Sibhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of different things.It can mean “I want to have sex with you” and it can also mean “I think what you said was very stupid”.Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose,It can mean that you are relaxed.or that you are bored,or that you are angray,and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just before hundreds of other things are too complicated to work out in few seconds.
The second main reason …

It takes me a long time to get used to people I do not know. For example, when there is a new member of staff at school I do not talk to them for weeks and weeks. I just watch them until I know that they are safe. Then I ask them questions about themselves, like whether they have pets and what is their favorite color and what do they know about the Apollo space missions and I get them to draw a plan of their house and I ask them what kind of car they drive, so I get to know them. Then I don’t mind if I am in the same room as them and don’t have to watch them all the time. So talking to the other people in our street was brave. But if you are going to do detective work you have to be brave, so I had no choice.

iRead : It’s Not About the Bike

To be afraid is priceless education
-Lance Armstrong

Frankly i don’t like autobiographies.Its better to read one wikipedia page then reading 300+pages…but in the past i have read one (was forced to..) about and written by sidney shelton .I didn’t enjoy it much so i thought will never read any autobiography again …but here i am… reading one more (again forced by priyanka) its about lance armstrong called “Its not about the bike”….my journey back to life.

Its not about the bike

Lance is a american cyclist and has won the Tour de France a record-breaking seven consecutive years. But as the name suggest its not about the bike..its about how he survived the testicular cancer with 20% chances of getting out of it.

The book tracks lance from his childhood to his second tour de france win , from his personal life to professional life,from personal setback to magical comeback,from sense of loosing to sense of belonging,from lows to highs,from nowhere to everywhere….

The book narrative is simple and engaging.The book written by Lance along with Sally Jenkins gives detailed narrative of how lance fought with cancer..his pain,helplessness,determination,anger,joy …all well caught. What i liked most is the message it gives…”impossible is nothing” ..great motivational book.Its about surviving the worst.. Its story of human triumph over all odds.

Lance says if he has to choose between winning the tour de france and cancer he would choose cancer.He would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the tour,because of what it has done to him as a man,a husband,a son,a father and as human.It just explain how much agony and pain his been through.

A USA today quote explain what he and his book means to cancer community.
“Among cancer survivors, it is known simply as The Book.”

Just a para from the book:

“I asked myself why my victory had such a profound effect on people .Maybe it’s because illness is universal-we’ve all been sick,no one is immune-and so my winning the tour was a symbolic act,proof that you can not only survive cancer,but thrive after it.Maybe,as my friend Phil Knight says,i am hope.”

If you have a heart ….you cant miss this one!!!!!!!!!!!

My rating 4/5.

p.s.: Thanks priyanka!!!!

iRead : That Thing Called Love

ITs been a while since Pj(My Ex TL) left the company but we are still in touch she is a gem of person…it was wonderful having her as my tl-cum-friend….one of the nicest person i have ever met…(this was for u Pj…)..i miss u… :)

cut to :

Coming to the point Pj told me about this book called “That thing called Love” that she was reading author was first time writers called Tuhin ;Although i have been lucky with first time writers like chetan bhagat (five point someone) and Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) , i was little skeptical about this book neither it was so popular nor its review’s on the net was
that good….but as i had no other option(book) ..i started reading it..

When i read the first chapter i thought its a work of a naive writer but i decided to go on with the book…and as i read more and more chapter i got really into the book….

Basic premise :

It basically story of a marketing guy called Mayank who has lost his love years back and now engaged to a girl(rewa),about whom his not sure whether she will make good life parter or not and then he meets the right gal(revathi)….but wait kahani me twist.. the gal is a married and has a kid and almost 10 years elder then the our hero….but mayank cant resist and from just a casual friend go on to become a obsessed lover …and then wat happen to rewa…revathi..and mayank…..read the book.

There are 2-3 subplots in the book but some times you feel they are unnecessary and some parts could have been avoided for example the gay encounter of one of the charactes in the book….subplots are not that intresting but wat makes u turn pages is the sheer curiousity about wat will happen to mayank and reavthi and how will the story unfold……

Verdict :
All in all a nice read and i am definately looking forward to read more book’s of tuhin.

PS : The book has added quite a number of words to my vocabs…:P

till den…. :)